With the increasing popularity of personal computers over the last several years has come a striking growth in transaction-oriented computer-to-computer communications (as opposed to bulk-data transfers among such computers). For convenience herein such transaction-oriented computer-to-computer communications will be described by the shorthand term "information transaction". That growth in the use of computers for such information transactions has unquestionably been fueled by the existence of an international infrastructure for implementing such data communications, known as the Internet. And, driven by the burgeoning demand for such information transaction services, the Internet has itself experienced explosive growth in the amount of traffic handled.
At least partly in response to that demand, a new level of accessibility to various information sources has recently been introduced to the Internet, known as the World Wide Web ("WWW"). The WWW allows a user to access a universe of information which combines text, audio, graphics and animation within a hypermedia document. Links are contained within a WWW document which allow simple and rapid access to related documents. Using a system known as the HyperText Markup Language ("HTML"), pages of information in the WWW contain pointers to other pages, those pointers typically being a key word (commonly known as a hyperlink word). When a user selects one of those key words, a hyperlink is created to another information layer (which may be in the same, or a different information server), where typically additional detail related to that key word will be found.
In order to facilitate implementation of the WWW on the Internet, new software tools have been developed for user terminals, usually known as Web Browsers, which provide a user with a graphical user interface means for accessing information on the Web, and navigating among information layers therein. A commonly used such Web Browser is that provided by Netscape.
The substantial growth in the use of computer networks, and particularly the WWW, for such information transactions, has predictably led to significant commercialization of this communications medium. For example, with the WWW, a user is not only able to access numerous information sources, some public and some commercial, but is also able to access "catalogs" of merchandise, where individual items from such a catalog can be identified and ordered, and is able to carry out a number of banking and other financial transactions. As will be obvious, such commercial transactions will typically involve sensitive and proprietary information, such as credit card numbers and financial information of a user. Thus, with the growth of commercial activity in the Internet, has also come a heightened concern with security.
It is well known that there are persons with a high level of skill in the computer arts, commonly known as "hackers", who have both the ability and the will to intercept communications via the Internet. Such persons are thereby able to gain unauthorized access to various sensitive user information, potentially compromising or misappropriating such information.
The vulnerability of such sensitive user information to misuse when so transmitted via the Internet is a phenomena which has only recently received wide public attention. Unless such security concerns can be quickly addressed and alleviated, the commercial development of this new communications medium may be slowed or even stalled altogether.